Timed to coincide with the Sunday Times Literary Festival at Christ Church College, the O3 Gallery’s Endnotes exhibition saw sixteen artists present their interpretations of the connection between visual art and literature. The artists were given one or two books withdrawn from Oxford Central Library and drawing inspiration from them, they created artworks in media ranging from photography to basket making. One of the curators, Diane Jones-Parry, explains the motivations behind the exhibition: ” The exhibition was…designed to celebrate the value and importance of books and libraries when county, school and local libraries are under threat.” The artists were chosen for their diversity in preferred medium, age, and gender, reflecting, the curators claim, the diversity of library-goers and readers.
The effectiveness of the exhibits was as diverse as the artists that created them. Some were successful, for example, a short film by Jim le Fevre in the form of a flipbook, made from a book about movie stars, that showed the journey from Oxford Central Library to the gallery itself. The medium was a nod to the book’s original content, while the work elicited a pleasant ‘isn’t that clever’ feeling in the viewer. Similarly, another film by Laurence Halstead which used live action and stop-motion techniques, showed us a man’s effort to digest an airport novel. Literally. The film succeeds in providing viewers with a metaphor that has numerous avenues of interpretation. Perhaps the artist may have struggled his way through the novel (hence the hilarious title “Reader’s indigestion”) or maybe he is making a general statement about our position as consumers, rather than genuine appreciators, of literature. And the film itself was rather entertaining too – how often do you get to see a man eat a book?
Unfortunately, not all the works were quite as good. Some felt random and lazy, like the sculpture that sat in the middle of the floor that was entirely composed of a series of photocopies stapled together. And there were others that were just perplexing – a series of pages tied up in neat little parcels, for example. One felt that the exhibits could be divided into two categories: one that took either the content of the books or the link between the artist’s chosen medium and literature as genuine inspiration, and the other that simply took the books and did something (or anything, in fact) with them without acknowledging the unusual remit set out by the curators.
In sum, possibly worth a look if you’re into this sort of thing. And if you leave disappointed, there’s always doughnuts at the Krispy Kreme nearby to cheer you up.
